Friday, 11 October 2013

After more than two weeks of teasing, we are happy to properly announce our new game: SOMA. It is a sci-fi horror game played from a first person perspective with the goal to deliver a truly disturbing experience. Having worked on this project for over three years now, it is really nice to finally reveal it to the world!

The game will be released for PS4 and PC, and it will be out some time in 2015.

Here is the official reveal trailer featuring some gameplay:

Making The Trailer
While the footage above is unedited gameplay footage (I played through and recorded it myself), it is not from an actual game level. Just like with our Amnesia teaser video, it is a custom made map that is meant to show off the general feel and tone of the game over a four minute long trailer. This means that it is notan exact representation of how the game is actually played. It gives a pretty good idea of how the gameplay works though.

Coming up with the idea for this trailer was quite hard. We knew from the start that we wanted to have it as recorded gameplay. It was crucial that it showed that SOMA will allow you to play through its central themes. The subject matters of the game are not some kind of wrapper, they are an integral part of the gameplay. So having a trailer entirely made out of uncut gameplay felt like the best way to show this.

With Amnesia doing this sort of thing was fairly simple as the core ingredient was the player running and hiding from monsters. In SOMA it is much more complex. While the game also has its share of monsters, hiding and stuff like that, it is not what makes the game special. What sets SOMA apart is that it gives a first person account of some deep and really disturbing ideas regarding the self, mind and consciousness. These are things that we take a lot of time to build up in the actual game, so showing it off in a few minutes is quite difficult.

Our first idea was to use a lot of dialog to get this across, but that did not feel right. The player will be be an active participant, and do not sit by passively listening to characters having discussions. So instead we approached the themes in a very direct and visceral manner.

A final aspect of making the trailer was not to have too many spoilers. Because of this, the video does not star the protagonist from the actual game, but a totally different (and minor) character. The events that occur in the trailer are not taken directly from the game either. They just showcase the kind of happenings one can expect from the final game. This means that we can give a good overview of what the game is about, without spoiling the actual game experience. But don't worry, the things in the video are very much related to the game's story. Everything you see are hints of things to come.

First I guess I have to settle the big debate: Are these inspired by SCP? And, yes they are! That was actually the pitch for the whole thing: "Let's have some SCP-like texts on the website to give out spooky and fragmented info before the final trailer is released.". The game itself is however not very close to the SCP-style at all. There are some SCP inspiration in SOMA for sure, but it is a lot more subtle and has to do with how we think about monsters and artifacts. They play a larger role now, the foreboding is much deeper and there is a bigger connection with them and the central themes in the game. Actually, a lot of the SOMA's themes are directly expressed through interactions with enemies, an idea that stems from SCP.

Enough SCP, let's move on to the actual teaser texts and films. At first the teasers had a much weaker production values. The idea was just to use plain text and perhaps a few images. As Mikael wrote these he suggested that we might add sounds to them, e.g. a recorded interview, and that felt like a good idea. But that was as far as we thought about going.

When discussing a release trailer for Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, we came upon Imagos Films and decided to give them a go. Jens contacted them about making a trailer, and they were really excited about it. They even agreed to having a meeting in the middle of the night in order to fit our schedule. Some quick drafts were made for a trailer, but because of various issues, it all fell through in the end. We felt bad about this and promised they would be our first choice when needing some other video material.

A few days after Mikael suggested having voices for the texts, it hit me that we could perhaps use Imagos Films to do some simple clips instead. We mailed them and they said they were up for it, so Mikael converted the transcribed audio from the documents to film scripts and then we set the ball rolling. I did not really expect much from the films, but after seeing the first few WIP shots and production designs, I knew that it could actually turn out really cool. But the end result turned out even better, and it blew my (and everyone else's at FG) mind.

It has to be mentioned how quickly these films were put together. The first script drafts + instructions were sent on the 2nd of september. This meant they had a less than a month to produce the first movie. Then another movie needed to be done a week after that. Given the amount steps needed to go from script to final film, this is insanely fast.

Will there be more movies? We would really like that to happen, but nothing is set yet. Stay tuned for more news regarding that!

End Notes
This reveal has been quite a lot of hard work and there have been way more things to deal with than I first thought. Worst must have been the major server failures that we had on the days before the first teaser would go live. This turned out to be because of a DDoS attack and took quite a while to fix (Jens had to come out of a parental leave to work on it). We had to put off the whole first reveal for a day because of this. It was quite embarrassing, as people wondered what the hell happened and we had to reschedule a bunch of other stuff connected to the reveal (like the PlayStation Europe twitter).

And then of course the final trailer reveal had to be problematic too. Early on the day before reveal (as of writing, yesterday) Tapio, external sound person, had finished editing the trailer, all of David's, external art person, animations were in and all sound was synced and nice. However, as he exported the final version the quality was crap. I had hoped to have a calm day and just code stuff but instead I had to help Tapio search for the error, trying to convert files better, etc. Nothing worked. On top of this, our ftp servers were really slow and sending files took a long time and was a general pain. Eventually, I had to re-edit the entire trailer (adding animations, fades and syncing sound) using Windows Movie Maker as quick tests showed the final quality was much better there. At the same time we became aware that we also needed an ESRB logo and had to scavenge the net for a proper one. We were now much later than planned and stress was taking its toll. After many grueling hours we finally got it working though. Only to find out the next morning (day of the reveal) that the damn ESRB logo was not shown long enough, so more editing, exporting and uploaded were needed.

In the end it worked out fine though and the whole reveal has been very successful. (As I am writing this we have not seen any reactions to the final video, so I am hoping those are good .. :) )

Now it is time to go back full time on work for the actual game. We are all incredibly excited about SOMA and hope that these 2+ weeks of teasing and reveal have gotten you all interested aswell.

And do not worry, between now and the 2015 release there will be a lot more unsettling stuff revealed!

Want to end with some links to the non-Frictional people that helped this reveal happen:

Hope you would say something about AAMFP sales after one month.The most pleased thing to hear is that SOMA will be for PC and not just console exclusive!The trailer looks very good and scarier than I thought. Seems you are making a true horror game again.

But how can a game take 5 years of work? Do you make it bigger, longer, more complex, more puzzles and even deeper and better than all before?

"But how can a game take 5 years of work? "I wonder that too :) There has been a few slowdowns along the road, such as AMFP and the portal 2. It has also been about homing in on the game properly. We have made TONS of iterations on design to make it right.

It's sad to hear we won't be able to get a chance to play this until 2015, but knowing your record with making games I know it'll be worth the wait. I'm curious to know what sort of rout you'll take with this. Amnesia was mostly about the scary monsters chasing you, which of course is great for youtube jumpscares and people seemed to like it a lot, while I think Machine for Pigs was more of an ambient horror and relied more on it's concept rather than it's monsters to scare people. It seemed like people responded a lot more to the monsters being the source of the horror rather than the environment or the concept of the game, so I'm wondering what sort of approach you'll be taking this time around.

I feel most of the reason people say Machine for Pig's wasn't scary was because they were expecting to be chased by monsters down creepy hallways again, which there wasn't much of in that game, but maybe if people had gone in with a different expectation they would have had a different experience?

I suppose I'm curious if you feel the marketing for Machine for Pigs lead people to expect another monster chaser, and maybe switching up how you presented the game would have changed people's experience? How will this new game be in terms of ambient horror or more of a "monster chasing" sort of horror that the first Amnesia was?

Amnesia was not just scary because of the chasing monsters. It's the sounds, the atmosphere and the environments what build up the horror experience. I'm not talking about jumpscares. And as more monsters a game will have, as less impact every monster will cause.

About AMFP: yes, it's a different kind of game, and it has a different feel; however, the reason it felt somewhat underwhelming on the horror side of things is, I think, that it didn't quite use the full potential of the game environments and game/level design in general to support the backstory in an immersive way. People have said that the the gameplay itself feels more like a backdrop then the centerpiece. This is a design problem, and is reflected to various degrees in different aspects of design disciplines.

For example - consider the little visual details; one thing that significantly bothered me (without realizing it at first) was that for the entire duration of the game, the machine itself, its metal parts, looked incredibly clean, almost new - no rust, no scratch marks, no decay. Maybe I've played too much of the original Silent Hill games, but in SH, as well as in games like Condemnded, and the original Amnesia, and some others, there are environments that are visually designed in such a way that you get horrible anxiety just by "being there" (just by looking at them) - you just want to get out, your brain can't stand it. It's almost as if you're afraid you'll catch some disease if you linger for too long! And God knows what horrible mutant awaits behind the next corner. Thus, the environments themselves provoke both the feeling of suspense and the feeling of disgust - both very important for horror. In AMFP, you just don't have enough of this, for the most part of the game. Except for the darkness, practically nothing looks or feels foreboding, or disgusting or (except for the obvious parts) intrinsically disturbing.

Another thing is that the game world feels too inconsistent or unrealistic, even if it could be, arguably, just in the mind of the protagonist. The supernatural and the monsters aside, the internal consistency of the world they are placed in greatly contributes to making the player feel as if there is actual danger there. Sure, the original Amnesia wasn't too concerned with how realistic the premise of vast underground spaces actually is, but it didn't feel too far-fetched either. AMFP somehow feels more as a collection of disjoint setpeaces, then a single connected world. We jump (somewhat randomly) from one part of the machine to the next, but none of it actually feels connected; the machine is a serial one in nature - output of one part feeds into the next. But in the game, the serial nature of the machine feels more as if it comes from "programmer magic". The subsystem just don't seem to fit together in a natural way.

Now, don't get me wrong - AMFP certainly had some really great moments. But it could have been quite a bit more.

I cannot wait for more informations about SOMA. Actually i am very excited by your reveal. Well Done! :-) Also i'm so glad that Frictionnal Games finaly comes to the console market. To me, this reveal is almost as big as your new game itself. I guess i should congratulate Sony too because of their strong support towards the independant gaming scene.

What led to you deciding to announce the game with the teasers, gameplay trailer and everything this early?. Not saying it does not have its advantages but it is uncommon and it would be lovely to hear with your own words why you chose to do so.

Two things:1) 3 years and no talking about this. Feels good to have it out in the open and adds extra inspiration / motivation to the development.

2) Chris Hecker gave a great mini lecture at this years GDC where he basically argued that "Nobody Knows About Your" game. And we are really in agreement there and want to have has big and wide awareness campaign as possible. That meant to start it early.

This stuff looks sick!! I hope this will become as twisted and disturbing as it looks. It would be a shame if a great idea like this would be shattered. So please, don't let this become the next AMFP. :)

I'm hyped for this. When I first heard about SOMA I expected it to be all high-tech ultra futuristic and shiny setting which was cool, but this is even cooler. The psychological subtext can be great if done properly... I have a feeling that this is Silent Hill 2 tier material here.

The live action trailers worked perfectly, and I love that you do your gameplay trailers like this - i.e. not actual scenes. Glad to hear this reveal has gone well overall - congratulations!

Psychological sci-fi happens to be my favourite genre (of any media) too, can't wait to see what you guys are going to do with it! Seeing a Philip K Dick quote on the teaser page is a very promising sign. Also, can't wait to see all the awesome design theories you've been talking about put into practice

Interesting to hear how quick those live actions scenes were done! It was surprising to see them, and the production quality looked like it would have taken several months at least, Imagos films are clearly a seriously talented group

I just wanted to make a few comments about the engine and about the, it appears, improved production quality, but before I do that: I love the new design of the logo.

Now, based on the trailer, you lighting model looks much better this time around - I love it. And of course, since real world visuals are light-driven, your game now looks pretty damn good as a result.

Also, your team's texturing skills seem to have improved quite a bit, which also contributes to the visual quality of the game. In my experience, a good texture can make a huge difference, and yet to get a good texture you need an artist who has a good feel for subtle manipulations of things like details, saturation, hue, contrast, etc.

Next, particle systems and volumetric effects look quite good (and better lit), so congrats on that. (I'm curious, have you improved the lighting of particle systems, or is the skillful design of the PS itself to credit for the great look?)

Finally, a question about HPL2 - will you release the source code, and if so, when can we expect it?

FWIW, I thought the reveal was awesome. The somasystems site definitely gave an ARG feel to the reveal, and I would love to see it come back online for any future reveals, especially if they are the live-action film clips.

Definitely looking forward to the game when it comes out. The preview gives off a Silent Hill vibe, and that kind of creepy is the best sort. I've played a lot of horror-based games, but nothing has ever given me the same sort of feeling of dread that Silent Hill did... until now.

I hope you could have some collaboration from "The Chinese Room", despite all the critics (good and bad) the ambient music, the history and the level designs were almost universally praised (personally i think the ambient with the music were really beautiful).

Thomas, a piece of advice on custom stories, if I may (although you may have thought of this already) - scripting-wise, considering that OOP is now involved and more advanced stuff is now possible, make sure to also provide a "basic" scripting API similar to the functionality available for Amnesia, so that less advanced users (read: users not that skilled in programming) can still create custom stories in a way similar to how they learned to do it with Amnesia, without sacrificing the full power of the scripting system, of course.I think this is important because this is the majority of your user base, and this way the learning curve will be much smoother for them.

No fear! Pretty much the EXACT same functions as in Amnesia exist in TDD! There have just be some renaming, for instance SetEntityAcitve(...) is now Entity_SetActive(..). Should be quick to learn. This also maket the programming much simpler as our editor (CodeLite) has autocompletion, so you can just type "Entity_" and then see a list of all available functions that start with that.

Tomas, do you think we will see Engineer Reed in the final game, or have any major female characters in SOMA? In Amnesia TDD and Amnesia AMFP the women are all dead before the story starts, the last one I remember was Amabel in Penumbra: Black Plague. Not intended as a criticism, just an observation and query. I'm also curious about the father-son relationships in Frictional's stories, what with retracing your father's steps in Penumbra, the role Alexander plays as a mentor in TDD, and of course Mandus and his children. However, SOMA seems to be a similar aesthetic vein to Alien, which of course has central themes of mothering, pregnancy and birth, and the core horror of SOMA seems to involve a brutal challenge to one's sense of self, from what I can tell.

I'd love to hear some of your thoughts about self, gender or parent-child relationships in horror, but I won't hold my breath for a reply on such a vast topic. I wish you the very best of luck with the development of SOMA and I eagerly anticipate further updates.

Cannot speak for Machine For Pigs (as I had a virtually non-existent part in the making of its story), but the parental thematics in the other games are pretty much accidental. They simply served as good plot devices.

As for females as characters it is something that we think about a lot. Not sure for ideological reasons, but also beacuse it makes the storytelling better. I am afraid I cannot really go much deeper into than that this early.

Good to hear you are giving some thought to female characters. Interesting that the parent-child stuff is just how it turned out, rather than explicitly planned. It seems you are moving in a new direction anyway with SOMA.

I feel like there are too few female protagonists in general, but even though I would love to see engineer Reed as a protagonist, I think she might be too strong for the role of a panicky and helpless survivor.

I would have loved to play through the beginning of the story, as everything gradually goes to shit and I'm helpless to prevent the disaster. Unfortunately I don't think Frictional does that kind of thing, and I don't think they do human NPC. This time I don't think even the MC will be human, and maybe that's why the gameplay trailer doesn't show the PC hands, because he doesn't have any.

I have a question: ATDD had that great atmosphere of the 'rotten' place. The castle was so dark and obscure, I was really, really immersed into the world. Will SOMA have the same feeling of that 'dirty place'? Because sci-fi sounds more like a clear, modern room, while in ATDD even corridors seemed to be so nasty and hostile.

Well, the live action trailers gave me the creeps.The game looks awesome. Even if you can't nail the horror as good as in the first Amnesia, it will probably be an otherworldly adventure game (and interactive!; there are a lot of groundbreaking games out there, but I didn't like the interaction, because it seemed removed, like in Dear Esther or Dys4ia).

So intriguing! Although I must say (not sure if it's only me) that the kind of American accent present there doesn't really cut it for me, it cheapens the whole thing. I loved the voice actors in TDD (ah, the British accent)! I just don't want to hear the character saying something like "Mai gaaaad..!" like in that teaser video. This might be only me though! :)

1) Please, no constant noise of the character breathing in the final game, or at least make a option to turn on and off. It seriously annoys me and put me off many games. In fact, the reason for this is because I have OCD (I really do) and one of the "weird" things that really makes unconfortable in real life is the constant loud noise of someone breathing hard. Please, if you folks really want to have it in the game, make it optional, I do beg you.

2) This one is just a personal option, not a issue someone that bothers in real life, but here it goes anyway: In these kind of immersive horror games, I prefer silent protagonists all the time. To be playing a character that is constanly screaming from a scare, or saying out lout "WTF?" and "OMG!" and such just distracts me from the expericece.

I played the shit out of penumbra and amnesia the dark descent. really digging the vibe and design of this game! reminds me of the space-jockey ship in alien! and that s fantastic. keep up the good work. whenever i get stuck while programming, your team and other personal faves of mine inspire me to overcome!

I am not finishing amnesia, that stuff's way to scary for me. I jump high enoth watching someone else play a game of that fearcaliber. Looking foreward some great sleepless nights in 2015.Thank you Thomas.

Hello Thomas, I'd like to ask you a question about SOMA. I know I'm a bit late after your post, but hopefully I have a good and meaty question worth looking at. Will the character you play as talk, or will they be silent? I think the silent protagonist has worked really well for your games, especially sense you want the player to have their own opinion on what they see and feel through out the game. I know the philosophy on your games is about having the player live through the game and feel like they were truly inside the game, at least for amnesia. Is that your focus for SOMA as well? I'd really love to have an answer when you have the time. Its that premise that I think makes your games so good. Thanks, and good luck on SOMA!

Awesome!! The teaser remind me a lot , H.P.Lovercraft (cthulhu mythos), the metal piece with a red light, the tubes conecting to the bodys,etc... but why i dont see any mention of this yet.... anyway, congrats guys, another great game...

For me what is wrong with AMFP is our enemy is just a little pig at the beginning and its revealing itself too early. In the dark descent enemy not revealing himself that early and because of the dark environment you can not see him cleary. That's a good way for making the monster creepy as much as possible in a long term. Also shadow was more creepier than piggies. I mean piggies get creepier over time but they were have to be that way in the early of game, because players gets used to its atmosphere. Secondly, inventory and sanity. These are the things that making those moments intense for players. In last game, i didn't saw any intelligent puzzle fluid with the game and with the story. Like the little puzzle in "penumbra black plague" where you chased in a room by a new type of enemy. What you need to do is making a fool from him by locking him in a some sort of refrigeration room. Or passing a security door using a syringe which is full of blood that was taken from a dead scientist body. I want to see those type of things again. And I certainly excited from theme as a sci-fi and as a h.r. giger fan. And by the way sorry for the headache, i'm not good in English especially in grammer.

This looks so awesome ;u; You guys do such great work! I'm curious; did you get any inspiration from Matrix or Ghost in the Shell? Some of the scenes from the trailer remind me a lot of the real world shown in the Matrix movies and the brains made me think of the first Ghost in the Shell movie : ) Gah, I'm so excited! >w<